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Monthly Archive for October, 2008
I can across an article about frustrated fans presented with the opportunity to buy tickets for the Hampton Phish shows at a serious premium after getting shut out by Ticketmaster. In fact, it linked them to a site owned by Ticketmaster, called TicketsNow.
A couple fans were so pissed off about this, they left a couple comments on the TicketsNow blog. In response to those comments, Cheryl Rosner, the CEO of TicketsNow, posted a response. Her response was your everyday CEO spin on their sleazy business of basically being a ticket broker, aka legalized scalper. Her claim, unsubstantiated of course, is that the tickets sold on TicketsNow were not diverted from the pool of tickets sold by Ticketmaster. That simply means that non-fans, assholes looking to make a few bucks, quickly bought tickets through Ticketmaster and quickly turned around and posted them for sale on TicketsNow. Her response truly pissed me off to no end. I left a comment on it. I would not be surprised if it does not get approved. So here are the contents of my comment, word-for-word:
I don’t think you are understanding this. Where does your supply of tickets come from? No matter how you try to spin it (because that’s what CEOs, like you, do, spin things to make yourselves look good), those tickets came from a pool of tickets that should be sold for face value. They may have been purchased by people other than Ticketmaster (though I would love to audit exactly who is buying tickets for high demand events, as I have my own thoughts on Ticketmaster’s cronies), but they were purchased by people who had no intention of attending the show. They were purchased by people who want nothing more than to make a profit off the backs of the band. In fact, you are making a profit off the backs of the band by allowing this, as I’m sure you charge a fee for your “service”. What Ticketmaster is doing is exactly what the Phish organization went out of their way to prevent during their pre-sale. Jack and VTPhishFan were correct in calling you scum. I will take it one step farther and call you worse than scum. There’s a place in the inner circle of hell for people like you and your organization (your parent company falls just outside that inner circle, but close by).
As a business, you are scalpers. You just happen to be owned by a near-monopoly on ticket sales. You can spin it however you want, but you are no better than the sleazy jerks in the parking lots selling tickets for 8 times face value.
If tickets are selling out in a matter of minutes, then ALL the tickets should be in that pool. I understand how capitalism works, but when tickets are advertised for a certain price, they ALL damn well better be on sale for that price.
The only fair resale price of tickets is that price for which they were originally purchased. Considering you didn’t pay anything for your pool of tickets, you should be giving them away.
In addition to the BS you just spewed in this post, you are violating the wishes of the band by allowing re-sale of their tickets. They’re the ones who pay your bills (or rather the bills of your parent company, Ticketmaster), at the very least, you can respect their wishes. I guess that shows just what type of people work for TicketsNow and Ticketmaster.
And don’t patronize us by telling us you buy tickets through your own company. You know damn well you get them comped or just pull them from the general pool of tickets available at Ticketmaster.
If you care about attending concerts and not paying a premium to sleazy assholic scum (I think I made up a new word), you should leave a comment on her response. Currently, Phish tickets for every show are priced anywhere from $273 to $1654 on TicketsNow. Supposedly, the expensive ones are tickets to each of the 3 shows. Incredibly enough, all the tickets on TicketsNow seem to be floor seats. I wonder how all these random people managed to get first in line and get floor seats. Something tells me that these people are just Ticketmaster cronies who are able to purchase tickets ahead of the real on-sale time. I assume, as one would easily assume in this case, that TicketsNow has no way of verifying that the tickets being sold through their site are legitimate. In face, I would be more than willing to bet that some of these tickets are being illegally resold after being purchased from the Phish pre-sale lottery, which explicitly banned the re-sale. If Phish was thinking, they would have required the concert-goers to present the credit card used to purchase the tickets. That’s how the Mighty Mighty Bosstones are running their New Year’s Eve show here in Providence. There’s a reason I will never pay more than face value (plus the rip-off “service” and shipping fees) for concert tickets, no matter how much I want to go.
Update: As of right now (10/30/08 @ 10:26 PM EDT), my comment is still awaiting moderation. I took the liberty last night to comment on a few of the other posts on that blog. It’s truly amazing what pigs ticket brokers are, yet they think they’re doing a great service to the concert industry.
MTV launched a new site with every music video ever made (as proven by the fact that the video below was on the site). I had to dig up the best video ever made and the only video ever made by the best band to ever live. It features an adorable golden retriever named Marley.
I haven’t written a good review in a while, so here’s something to keep all you beer people looking for better beer. These 2 beers are hard to find, one harder than the other.
Founders Curmudgeon Old Ale is a bourbon barrel aged old ale. It pours a nice amber color with a very thin, quickly disappearing head. It smells a bit of bourbon and malts. The taste is mostly bourbon and it’s a bit hot. I bought this at the recommendation of a guy I know who works at Yankee Spirits. I liked this beer, but the amount of bourbon flavor and the heat took over my senses and I wasn’t able to really taste much else in the beer. I bought a 4 pack. I’m going to age the rest of it for a while and see what happens.
Founders Breakfast Stout is a coffee stout brewed with some chocolate. It’s a thick dark pitch black stout with a brown head. It smells of roasted coffee and a hint of dark chocolate. This is one of the smoothest coffee stouts I have ever tried. There’s a lot of coffee flavor in it, but the chocolate round it out nicely. It’s thick and a little on the oily side, but very tasty. If you can find this one, you will do yourself a disservice if you don’t buy it. It’s that good.
As a little extra, I also drank my bottle of Ithaca Ten, their 10th anniversary beer, a double red ale. This one was super carbonated with a huge head. It had a nice balanced hoppy flavor, but the malts were right up there with it and it had a slight rye flavor to it as well. It was very tasty once I was able to get past the head. This was exactly as it was described… a double red ale.
I may lose some readers (not that I have many) and I may gain some readers because of what I’m about to write. But I really don’t care. I support same sex marriage. Sure, I have a gay brother, but that has absolutely no effect on my views. The underlying issue is equality under the Constitution. This country believes in equal rights for all citizens. The Constitution doesn’t care about skin color, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation. While it doesn’t say anything about marriage, I firmly believe that banning same sex marriage, regardless of whether or not it is a state or federal issue is unconstitutional according to the federal Constitution.
A few states offer civil unions for same sex couples. These are not the same as marriage and do not give same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. Massachusetts was the first state to allow same sex marriage. It took a lawsuit that ended with judges, not activists, declaring that the state constitution does not explicitly deny same sex couples the right to marry in Massachusetts. California was the next state to have something similar happen, and most recently, Connecticut did the same.
This is not a religious issue. The United States offers freedom of religion. It means you can practice any religion you like and that the government will not force certain religious views on you. Marriage as we know it in our culture is primarily of a Judeo-Christian tradition. Man meets woman. They fall in love. They get married. They have children. It’s simple. However, that comes from a religious viewpoint. Our country offers a separation of Church and State. Religious issues do not belong in the hands of the government. The issue of whether or not same sex marriage is moral is a religious issue. The issue of whether or not same sex marriage should be legal is an equal rights issue.
People opposed to same sex marriage offer a whole slew of reasons why it should be illegal. Unfortunately, they are all based on religion. I have heard things as silly as “it would force churches to perform marriage between two men”. This is simply not true. I was raised Catholic. According to our current laws, a Jewish heterosexual couple can get married. However, if they walk into a Catholic church, the church will not allow them to marry. Religions have their own rules for what can and cannot go on. We are not looking to force religions to change their views. They can continue hating gays all they want and continue to perform only heterosexual marriages. That is within their legal rights. We are looking to force state marriage, performed by a representative of the state, not the Church. There is a big difference there. I was married in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest. I had the option of getting married by a justice of the peace. This would have given me the legal rights and benefits of being married, but not the religious rights and benefits (which are mostly intangible). The rights that gays want are those legal rights from the state and federal government.
Currently, because this issue is left up to the states to decide (as I do feel marriage should be), same sex couples married in Massachusetts, Connecticut, or California are only given the rights in their respective state. They do not get the same rights from the federal government that heterosexual couples receive. In my opinion, this is unconstitutional.
I have heard some crazy reasons for being against same sex marriage. The problem with all of these reasons is that they are either based on religion or based on some crazy idea that giving a subset of the population more rights will take away rights of other members of the same population. The latter is simply not true. You are still within your freedom of speech to say that same sex couples are immoral. You are within your freedom of religion to not allow same sex marriages to take place in your church. You are well within your rights to hold your own personal beliefs on what is and what is not marriage. However, these beliefs should not be present in law in this country. Offering equal rights to all citizens is part of the reason this country was created. Denying rights to a subset of the population is simply unconstitutional.
If you live in California, vote no on Proposition 8. If you live in any other state, vote against any efforts to define marriage as that between a man and a woman. In a country that touts freedom as our biggest reason for being, it is sad to see that such a large population of people wish to remove freedoms from others.
For more pathetically ridiculous reason why same sex marriage should be banned, you need not look any further than the wonderful people of California (at least those in favor of Prop 8).
I leave you with this quote. You’ve probably seen it before.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Reflect on that for a while before commenting.
My ears are still ringing. I’m fresh out of the Trey Anastasio show at Lupo’s. The only thing I heard from him prior to this show was his solo acoustic set at the Newport Folk Fest and the show they did in Brooklyn in August. Both were great. I got an email from my 2nd-cousin-in-law saying how great the CT show was a few days ago. Then I read a review of that show, which said it was pretty mellow.
Tonight was anything but mellow. I can’t even remember what they played, but they played for a good 3 hours. The first set was about 90 minutes. Highlights from that set were “Alaska,” “Sand,” “Ooh Child,” and I’m sure there were others that I can’t remember right now.
The second set was a little shorter. He came back with a killer “Push On Til the Day,” followed by a great “Gotta Jibboo.” He did a great “A Case of Ice and Snow,” which was slowed way down, but it gave it this great depth that the album version lacks. During the second set, the band left and he grabbed his acoustic for “Water in the Sky,” “Brian and Robert,” and “Get Back on the Train,” which he jammed out. The band came back and they played a few more songs, ending the second set with “Tuesday.”
The encore was pretty predictable. I haven’t seen him play with his solo bands in quite some time without playing “First Tube.” However, this one was special. In the middle of the song, some dude starts playing percussion and then takes over for Russ on the drums. Tony gets up from his bass and some other dude steps in. Finally, as the jam is getting insane, Scott Murawski, from Max Creek, comes out with what looks like another of Trey’s guitars and they trade licks throughout the remainder of the song.
I really think Trey was happy to be in a small club. It showed. He was into it, the crowd was into it, and the tunes just flowed (with some minor downtime). Trey is back at the top of his game. You can tell he’s clean. You can tell his heart is 100% back in this. Not only is his guitar work a million times better, his voice sounds more in tune (even moreso than it did in the 90′s, and he’s never been known for having a great voice). All I have to say for all of you going to Hampton, enjoy. Assuming the 4 guys from Phish rehearse enough together, those shows will be nothing short of epic.
Disclaimer: I don’t remember the setlist exactly. Some of those songs might be out of order. In fact, I’m sure they are. I also couldn’t hear Trey when he was announcing his guests. I thought he said Jamie Masefield on drums, but he’s not a drummer. It looked a little like Bill Kreutzman from the Dead. I couldn’t tell at all who the other bassist was. I’m sure a setlist will be posted overnight. The ringing is starting to go away and I’m just about ready to pass out. Until the next time…
Update: I’m good. It was Bill Kreutzman on drums and my first inclination about the bassist was correct. It was Oteil Burbridge, of Allman Bros. fame. The setlist is now up at Phantasy Tour.
Someone started a petition to get Phish to simulcast their Hampton shows (or at least the first one) so that people who were unable to get tickets can be part of their historic “reunion” (quotated because those of us who had been following them for years knew they weren’t breaking up for good, regardless of what Trey said).
I don’t have much faith in these online petitions, but I signed it anyway. I don’t have the money to go to Hampton, but I could spend the $15 to watch the show in a theatre. I did this for the 6/17/04 show in Brooklyn when they started their “farewell” tour. It was a blast and had the same vibe as being at the show (minus the torrential rain they had on Coney Island). There aren’t many artists who could put on a really fun movie theatre simulcast, but Phish is definitely one of the few that can. There were even people tailgating in the parking lot of the movie theatre (with cars from as far away as Vermont and New Hampshire in the lot of the Branford, CT Regal Cinemas). It was so popular, that theatre showed it on 2 screens, both completely sold out.
Anyway, sign the petition. Even if you get tickets, sign it. Having people able to go to movie theatres will keep at least some of the ticketless fools out of Hampton, making it that much more enjoyable for those with tickets.
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